Nine Change Principles: Tamsen Webster on Overcoming Growth Plateaus Using Strategic Communications

Tamsen Webster is the Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Message Design Institute, where she helps leaders craft compelling messages to foster large-scale change. With over 25 years of experience in persuasive message design, she is a renowned message strategist and keynote speaker. Tamsen is the author of two best-selling books: Find Your Red Thread and Say What They Can't Unhear. She has collaborated with major organizations, such as Harvard Medical School, Fidelity Investments, and Klaviyo, and serves as an Idea Strategist at TEDxNewEngland.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:52] The two major problems with how organizations approach strategic planning
[7:26] Why many organizations struggle with stalled growth and decision-making
[13:31] How to garner buy-in for change management
[19:51] Tamsen Webster’s approach to strategic messaging
[28:16] The difference between a brand’s communicated and executed values
[36:39] Storytelling and intuitive messaging as catalysts for effective communication
[40:08] How identity shapes decision-making and influences organizational change
[47:22] Balancing two opposing beliefs in business and leadership
[55:03] The importance of communicating change through mutual understanding
[1:04:50] A glimpse into Tamsen’s beliefs and interests
[1:19:05] Tamsen’s experience hanging out with Guns N’ Roses during a blizzard in the ‘90s

In this episode…

When strategic planning fails, it’s often because organizations either overlook their core values or struggle to communicate their vision effectively. Many businesses approach strategy with a broad brainstorming phase, leading to unrealistic or misaligned initiatives. How can leaders align decisions with their organization’s internal philosophy to catalyze intentional change?

According to message strategist Tamsen Webster, every decision follows an internal logic based on people’s existing beliefs. To foster lasting change, leaders must communicate in a way that aligns with these existing perspectives. Tamsen explains how identity shapes decision-making and why brand messaging should reflect true values rather than aspirational statements. By recognizing patterns in decision-making and communicating strategically, businesses can create messages that resonate deeply with employees and customers.

In this week’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris hosts Tamsen Webster, the Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Message Design Institute, to explore the nine principles of lasting change and how to gain buy-in for organizational transformation. Tamsen shares examples of strategic messaging in renowned brands, how to balance two opposing beliefs, and how storytelling and intuitive messaging influence effective communication.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"Every decision has a story behind it; if you want to change behavior, you have to change the story people tell themselves."
"The arguments we agree with are based on beliefs we already hold; lasting change starts by aligning with those existing perspectives."
"Messaging isn’t about forcing people to agree with you; it’s about helping them see why they already do."
"Identity is the greatest influencer; people act in ways that align with who they believe they are."
"If your brand’s stated values don’t match the customer experience, trust erodes, and no amount of marketing can fix that."

Action Steps

Align strategy with core values: Ensure all strategic decisions reflect your organization’s true beliefs and operational philosophy to drive authentic, lasting change.
Communicate change through shared beliefs: Frame messages in a way that resonates with existing perspectives to encourage buy-in and reduce resistance.
Identify and articulate your organization’s internal logic: Define the core principles that guide decision-making to create consistency in messaging and strategy.
Use storytelling to reinforce decision-making: Craft narratives that support key initiatives intuitively, making complex ideas easier to understand and act upon.
Audit brand messaging for alignment: Regularly review whether your brand’s stated values match the actual customer and employee experience to maintain trust and credibility.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond as you up area your business and your personal life, joining me today is Tamsen Webster. Tamsen is part keynote speaker, part message strategist, and all about building big ideas. She has combined her 20 years in marketing, 13 years as a Weight Watchers leader and four years as a TEDx executive producer, into a simple way to change how people see and what they do as a result. Today, we're going to be talking about the nine principles of lasting change and how to use them to get buy in and transformational change from your team. Tamsen, I am excited to have you here today.

Tamsen Webster 0:56

I am delighted to be here, William, it's it's lovely. I just, it's always fun to find new and different places to apply these concepts, and I can't wait to talk about them with you.

William Harris 1:06

Yeah, I love that. We're gonna be talking about a couple things. One of those is obviously the nine principles. I'll give a shout out real quick to your book. I read it. It's very good. We're gonna be calling out a lot of different things from here, but I really want to make sure I call out Nancy Harthut, the brilliant author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing. She's the one who put us in touch. If you guys also haven't read this, it's amazing. It's, I referenced it almost probably on a weekly basis with my team. It's so good, such a good book.

Tamsen Webster 1:31

Oh, it is, like, that's, that book is a Bible. Like, I, it's, yeah, but it's also not only like, about what to do, but if you're, if you get totally nerd it out on some of this stuff, like I do, just the fact that she just all the different research and the studies and the papers that she found to back it up. It's just, it's just this, like, beautiful collection of, like, has anyone ever looked at this? I'm like, I know who will know, and that's Nancy, yeah, yeah,

William Harris 1:56

yeah. Especially, like you said, it's a very practical approach to behavioral science, which I think is good in the creative spaces. So,

Tamsen Webster 2:03

yes, yes, yeah. Nancy gets that. I mean, she's got such a background, long background in advertising agencies, that she gets creatives and she understands what they do and don't want to get not that they can't. It's just that they're like, Oh, can't be bothered. So she really does such a beautiful job of streamlining it 100%

William Harris 2:22

Um, well, we're going to dig in. Before we do, I want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with one that sold for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com which is spelled Elumynt.com, that said, on to the good stuff. What is the problem with the way that we currently approach strategic planning?

Tamsen Webster 2:52

I would so I would suggest that there are two. One is that we don't we just say this is the strategy. Here we go. And the other I would say, is that we open it up almost too wide. So with extraordinary respect to Roger Martin, who knows more and has forgotten more about strategic planning than like anybody there, it's interesting to me that a lot of times when we see a process strategic planning, it starts with, okay, there's a thing that we're trying to do, there's a there's a goal we're trying to achieve, a problem we're trying to solve. And then there's like, okay, let's figure out how we could do that. And then there's this massive brainstorming phase, and we've got all these possibilities that are that are brought out, and that at some point we say, Okay, well then, like, what actually is realistic based on, like, what our internal revenue sources are and what what our staffing is. Now that sounds good, and it is. And I would suggest, however, that there is a missing step between the what are we trying to do, and the how might we and what I mean by that is, no matter, there is something even deeper than all of the Do we have the people? Do we have the revenue, etc, and that is based on what our organization does day in and day out, what our lived values and beliefs are, not just these ones that we say they are, what is actually possible here, what is actually aligned with, what this organization does, what it believes, what we've done so far, just in principle. The reason why I think that's so important is because, well, there's a couple reasons. One is it means that without unduly shrinking the number of suggestions that come on the table, instead of doing that, it actually only puts suggestions on the table that would still be. Acceptable to the vast majority of people in the organization, as opposed to putting everything on the table, at which point, because somebody's put it on the table, what ends up happening is then you start cutting out things that people based on their maybe their own individual values and beliefs might actually like, and then you start to invoke kind of loss aversion and Prospect Theory, where people start to fight against losing something. So I find that this idea of, let's understand why, what do we collectively believe is the right way to do things, not the tactics, but what are the principles that drive our tactics? If we start from a definition, there, we end up with not even, not necessarily, just as many options, but we certainly end up with a lot more options that are at least actually practical in principle. And then everything else needs to happen. About, okay, like, do we have the people? Do we have the money? But I would rather do that and start only with the things that like actually feel right to us from a principle standpoint, than to do all these extra things and just do this exercise for the sake of doing the exercise, and then start to, like, disappoint people, frustrate people, with all the things that we can't do, which is never a good place to start a forward moving process.

William Harris 6:24

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like it holds all the momentum in a pretty significant way. Would you say that if, if a business is stuck, they've plateaued at 10 million, 50 million, 100 million, but at this point, and they've, they've looked at other things that could be in the way, that maybe the thing that is likely in their way is this right here, this strategic planning piece of that that's what's kind of crippling their growth or keeping them from being able to move

Tamsen Webster 6:51

forward? Yeah. Oh, that was a question. Yeah.

William Harris 6:55

I mean, like, you would agree with that, that being the sentiment, because I've run into this on a number of times, and it's like there's a lot of things that I could point to, it on, on other areas that it's like, well, you know, maybe people are like, well, maybe we just need a new media buyer. Maybe, maybe that's not the thing, right? Or maybe we just need, you know, whatever this is, but it's like, or maybe the the vision and the way that you're going about creating the right strategy for your team is is missing the mark in some way, and that's why people can't get behind you, and that's where this stalled growth is coming from.

Tamsen Webster 7:26

So yeah, I would say again, there's probably two core Yes, I agree. Let me start there, and I would say that there's two core reasons why I think that happens. Number one, there is either so I what you're describing, what I'm really describing is whether or not an organization actually understands it's going to sound pretty geeky, but whether or not it understands its own philosophy about what it's doing, right, like, and why it's doing it. And I don't just just mean the Simon sinekian, why, of like, what's our purpose? What are we trying to do? I mean, what are the questions that we're answering in the marketplace. How are we answering them? And critically, why are we answering them that way? Again, that comes back down to, what are our kind of operating theories of why we think these approaches work? So I think sometimes when organizations get stalled, it's a because they don't know it at all. And so they're, they're able, you know, what they end up doing is they reach for this, and they reach for that, and they reach for that. In other words, they're grasping at tactics that are fundamentally misaligned with their kind of theory of the firm, to quote Peter Drucker, and therefore don't work because they don't like you're never able to quite deliver on them, because something about them just is misaligned with with what you do, how you do it, why you do it that way. The other case, and this is I will tell you, I'm like, on a mission to end this one as being the cause of it, is that that they do know and they aren't communicating it, or they haven't said it out loud. And a lot of times, people are saying, Well, isn't that what our mission is? No, isn't that what our brand is? No, like this is literally saying, like, we do it this way. We build our, let's say our this software of as a service, this social media platform we have, is built the way that it is, because we believe in comprehensiveness and information, if we don't understand the whole picture, then we don't understand what any individual part means. And we believe in a consistency meaning we need to be able to have a consistent language across those measurements so that that whole picture makes sense and we can actually make the comparisons that are necessary to understand how every individual pixel in that picture is functioning, and that's why we do what we do, the way that we do it, that those pieces, because I think they are so inherent to why an organization operates the. Way that it does. It literally doesn't occur to them to say it out loud. But it's those things. It's comprehensiveness and and and consistency. Let's say that are exactly why they are the perfect solution for certain clients where they also value of those things and put them up as the highest things that they could be. So to me, really, if there's if there's stalling, it's because there's one other reason. I'll get that in a minute. But if they're stalling, the two reasons to recap so far, it's just like, either they don't have it and they've never actually bothered with it, and I'm going to argue that they have it anyway, whether they think they should or not, and then the second thing is, it isn't it's not been articulated explicitly, so they're not benefiting from both the internal and external focus and amplification they could get from understanding actually really what it is. The last thing I would say is maybe they do have it, but they haven't really updated it, given the changing context of the environment, right? So that, you know, it's kind of that thing where if, if 3m had stayed as like a mining company, then they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. But they under, ultimately, they basically said, you know, actually, what's most important to us as a company, is not the question we're trying to answer. How can we find more coal? It's, How do we approach finding more coal, right? And it's basically, how do we take these insights of science, how do we apply them to life and and if they take away that question, and all of a sudden they look at what they've already built that's really, really strong. They're like, Oh, we can take this and apply it to all sorts of stuff, especially stuff that's sticky, right? And so that's what I'm saying, is that it's, it's sometimes, if there's a stalling, it's because there's been a hold on to, like, well, we solve this problem. And I'm like, you actually kind of your longer term benefit is in why you employ the strategies that you do, not why you employ the tactics that you do, because those are going to come from the strategy. But why do you why? Why again? Why do you solve those questions that way? Because that's actually a much more stable long term and B, those are already the muscles you've built. So if you're thinking about going forward to branding and marketing, they're going to be the ones that are already strong, already recognizable for what you're doing, and therefore easier to sustain long term and less likely to create some kind of gap where, like United, you say, fly the friendly skies, and then people's experience are not that right, like so by starting with what you do, actually do, and why, I think it's just generally a much more, a much, much, much stronger strategic base,

William Harris 12:53

it's beautiful. And so, okay, so I'm going to come back to, I think, point two, which is more on the communication side of this. For this, yes, there's a lot that I could uncover there. Yeah, if we're gonna say, Let's like, how do we move forward with improving this in order to get this to the point where there are nine principles that we're actually gonna get people to follow behind on this, one of the quotes that you had in your book that I liked is from Cicero. You said, if you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words. How does this quote get people to start buying in to what it is? The strategy is absolutely

Tamsen Webster 13:31

so what I would say to that and what I do say to that, so I'm not anticipating that I would say that. Is it okay? So the whole book really is about like the basic argument of the book is, if you are looking for buy in, for change. So let me define those two things real quick. Buy in, meaning somebody believing enough in something to act on it, out of internal motivation and change, as opposed to action, meaning action could be one time extrinsically motivated, et cetera. But change, for something to be changed, it is a sustained action, and it's sustained by that internal motivation. So if we're looking to build buy in for change, then there's really two principles that rise to the top of all this that are really, really important. Number one, and it is principle number two is that every decision has a story behind it. And one of the ways that I let me say that again, I said that very quickly, every decision has a story behind it, meaning whether we realize it or not. Anytime we make a decision, we are telling ourselves a story about why that decision makes sense, right and and generally, we are doing that unconsciously, until we're questioned, and then we pull up reasons right? And they may or may not be the actual reasons, but they are, we're going to pull up reasons. So another way I say this is that every action ends an internal argument in our head again about why that. Action does or doesn't make sense, and in other you know, yet another way to think about that is that we always humans. I don't care how technical you are, how engineering you are, how how informal and whatever you are, every human operates according to their own internal logic all the time. So that argument is going to follow the same process, and it's going to rely on the same existing premises, in other words, the pre existing reasons that are ready to go. That leads me to the second principle. So not only does every action end an internal argument, usually one you're not aware of, but second, the arguments we agree with are based on beliefs and desires that we already have. So the whole argument for the book is basically saying, well, because of those two things, because every action ends an argument, and the arguments we agree with are based on beliefs and desires we already have. The best way to build, buy in, to build that internally motivated action that will sustain change is to build that story that somebody will tell themselves. In other words, build the argument with elements they either already or intuitively agree are true. And so when it comes to kind of really thinking through, okay, how do we do this? And all it so, much of that is about figuring out, how do we start by articulating that argument, and a lot of times based on what we were just talking about. That means we actually have to start with, why are we telling ourselves that it's true? Because if we're trying to get it out to the marketplace or even just internally, when we're saying, hey, let's start this new project. Let's do this initiative. Somebody believes that that's a good that that's a good thing to do, and they've got reasons to do it. And here's the kicker, it's not the data, right? It's like the data is useful because the data validated some kind of gut response, not an emotional check, an intuitive check on that makes sense. And so really, what the book is articulating and advocating for, what I'm advocating for, that's just I wrote the book, is that just details, what I'm advocating for, is basically saying we need to craft that argument that passes that gut check that really determines whether or not someone's going to listen to anything else after it. So because if somebody doesn't, you know, if I say the best way to do this is this, and you're like, No, it isn't. Is, which is an intuitive response, not necessarily emotional, just like, nope, not based on what I know that's not the right way. How likely is it that any level of case study, testimonial, years in business, data, evidence, what is going to change their mind? It is not right. So unless we can start with things that they agree are true, why is comprehensiveness important when we're talking about reporting and social media. Why is consistency important when we're talking about that, then they now understand why you have the elements that you have. And by the way, since so few companies do this, the fact that you do is automatically going to separate you, differentiate you, and make it much, much harder for any competitor to come in, because they probably don't even know why they've got the features they do, but this company does.

William Harris 18:31

I like the way that you've worded this, even the difference between it's not an emotional response, it's an intuitive response, to a point I would say, one of the benefits that I've experienced in my own business was there was a part of me that thought that writing down your mission, vision values was just pointless until we did it, and I went through this process and we got there, and I could see how having those there enabled the team to say whether or not they align, but it also made it a lot easier for us, from a recruitment standpoint, to say, like, Are these people, the people who already agree with what we already are doing in the culture they have, yeah. So I'd say to a point there's, there's that idea where it's like, the easiest way to get buy in is to start with buy in, maybe right

Tamsen Webster 19:14

like, yeah, exactly. Have the right people, yeah, yeah, yeah, correct. And

William Harris 19:17

they're gonna go about this. But the reality is, the some of the things that we're going to do are going to change, right, like whether or not we have this feature, whether or not we are doing this going from cold to sticky notes, or whatever it is that you're talking about there. And so now you have to say, Okay, if you already agreed with how we got from A to B before, can I say, can I take you from A to C through B? Kind of almost like, can I take you here through the same process now with a different problem and telling that story. And so I think that makes sense. Like you said, it's because it's intuitive. Now you're saying, I'm going to align with what you already feel is true in your in your heart, in your gut.

Tamsen Webster 19:51

That's right. And if you don't feel that's true, you are like, we can, we can respectfully part ways and. I think that's really important, whether we're talking about hiring, whether we're talking about sales, whether we're talking about change management. Again, we can respectfully part ways, because we have a mutual understanding of where we're coming from. Because if I don't agree that comprehensiveness is important, when I fully understand why you say that it is sure I just just don't see the world that way. That not important to me? Fine, right? Because I can either, as a sales person, try to convince you why it's important, which is much more likely to just start to set off all of the psychological principles that are going to work against that, some of which I talk about in the book. Or I can just go, You know what? I'm going to low go look for people who do believe that, and then we're going to work out from there. And so I, while my most recent work before I started my own business was in sales, messaging, I spent the majority of my career before that in branding and marketing. And, you know, there's this, there's this perennial tension between marketing and sales. And I really wanted to get into sales messaging, so I could say, like, what are we doing in marketing? That's like, ticking you guys off, you know, and, and it's like, and then I was like, Oh, I get it. I mean, there's a lot of stuff, but the thing is, is that marketing, you know, the issue with the with I completely agree that a company should have a brand, a mission, a vision, you should have your, you know, your espoused values and beliefs. And if I could, like, wave a magic wand and say, there's one other critical piece that needs to be part of your core company documents, I would say that it's this kind of core theory, right? It's this core philosophy, because that's based on why you do what you do right now, the way that you do it. And so because any set of values, and I work with some startups that that that work with a very good system of of EOS, right? Like they use the EOS approach and and it's great. And I had a conversation with, uh, one of my clients that had just finished that process, and I said, so I'm just curious, because, literally curious, because I was just learning about EOS at the time. I said, of these values, how would you score yourselves on them right now, and they were like, oh. And I'm like, and are you operating in certain ways where someone would go? Yeah, that's not where you are right now. They're like, Oh, absolutely. I said, Okay, so we need something that says, Why are we doing what we're doing right now, so that we can identify sometimes, where are there gaps and what are we going to do to close them. Because I think sometimes when we just establish our brands and our visions, we're like, Yep, all done. And we don't take a look at, like, where we are right now. We're like, Yeah, we're not there yet. So what do we need to do to get there? And like I said, based on what we were talking about before, I believe, to my core, that the things that you are already doing and why carry enormous power in the marketplace. Because I would suggest that that certainly is true of individuals, that our outlook is our only truly unique thing, like the way that you see the world, why you believe, like that whole collection of why you think it operates the way it does, and what you think is right, and why you think it is right. You know, for you, William, as an individual, for me, that collection, there is no way anyone could absolutely reproduce that element. Sure, I believe the same thing is true of companies that there are like they've got a very unique philosophy and perspective about why they do what they do, even if they're in a commodity industry, even if they've got a commodity product. And one of my favorite examples of this that people seem to like as an example, this is like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. Sure, they both answer the same question with the same product, but why they do what they do in their own particular way completely changes what that actual product looks like, feels like, what the whole experience is, what the whole brand experience is, right? And just as an example, like we can work backwards from Duncan's tagline America runs on Duncan. Okay, so one of the things if they sell coffee, and they do, is that there has to be a belief, there a principle there about what they believe coffee represents. Like, what is coffee? If America runs on Duncan? You can figure this out. Anybody can figure this out. What is coffee to them? What do they think coffee is be able to get stuff done, fuel, exactly, and if America runs on it, what do they believe about the experience of getting coffee? It should be fast. Yeah. So if you can say, all right, we are trying to find like fast fuel at Duncan Now you say, Oh, well, now it's a lot easier to come up with tag. Time, by the way, but B you can also see how that is lived out in the whole experience of Duncan food that you can eat with one hand, like they maximize the speed with which you can come in and come out. Like, it's a fairly limited menu. There's nothing that you would want to sit and eat. You don't want to sit and eat in any of their stores. Like everything's hard and sticky like you don't want to be. I love Duncan. I'm in Boston. We like Duncan has my heart. But contrast that with Starbucks, clearly Starbucks has a different perspective on what coffee is. Now, if you believe they're branding on their stores, I don't that coffee is togetherness. They keep saying that coffee is community. No, it's not like I'm sorry, because, again, that's one of those places where there's a clear difference between their, ESP what's known as an espoused value and a spouse principle, and then the one that's in use. I would agree that they believe that coffee is an experience, and they would like it to be a community experience, but fundamentally coffee to them is an experience that's actually what is more played out by the experience that you have as their brand. And I would suggest that instead of saying, okay, like we need that fuel fast, we need an experience. We need an experience that actually kind of serves a purpose of like a certain kind of experience, right? And if we think all the way back to Starbucks beginning, they were talking about the third place, we need a place where we can actually take a break from everything else. In other words, something probably along the lines of the experience flavors the coffee. So not only is coffee and experience, but the nature of the experience, the coffee break, the break is actually more important than the coffee and then again, think about how that carries forward and the rest of the brand. Things are soft. You've got an extensive menu. They have music, they have Wi Fi, all of these things, other than their recent rule that says you have to buy something to keep staying there. Says to them, coffee is an experience. But now you start to see how, like, if they start to lose the true understanding of what their philosophy is, they start to make choices off of it. Right now. They start to say, well, you have to buy something extra. I'm like, All right? Well, now you've just kind of, how together is it? If I have to buy my way into togetherness, right? You know? So this is one of those things where I just, I keep coming back to it is really important point. Get these things out loud.

William Harris 27:32

Togetherness wasn't the real thing to your point, was it? And when I think about togetherness, now, if I say, like, coffee is community, I'm gonna give a shout out to a small, little coffee shop in Canton, Ohio, my hometown, mugs, wigs, coffee. Because that is what it is. When you go there, it is, it is they, you know, they've got the board games, and people are actually playing games, and people are playing chess, and they have open mic nights and poetry nights, and they're, hey, if, if Starbucks was going to say coffee is community, that would be the thing that I've never been to an open poetry night, ever at a Starbucks? Maybe they haven't, but I'm not aware of them, right? But that's what I would say, that is that, but to your point, coffee is an experience, sure, and if you want to pay for that, if you want that experience, got to pay for it, right? So sure, you got to pay for the coffee. Okay, got it. Coffee is an experience, okay?

Tamsen Webster 28:16

And what I would suggest is actually the experience to date of Starbucks, and I'm really just realizing this as you're talking about because it's such a beautiful contrast, is, if you really think about it, Starbucks is about individual experience. It's about I get a quiet place to just be by myself, and maybe I'm hanging out, but there's not a lot of like people hanging out with other people at Starbucks. Right, right. So again, like, I look at it and I go, Gosh, but what a valuable thing that is to have a quiet place where I can just, yeah, okay, maybe, if the cost of entry is a coffee every two hours, or, my favorite, a London Fog Latte every two hours, I'm a tea drinker, fine, but it's like, again, like, they want to be like, from a break, this is when the point where the the marketing people, like, got a hold of it, and I'm like, Y'all No, because the marketing people were like, Let's be about community. And I'm like, and you're anti union, Starbucks. So again, like, we're togetherness, but not if in you're in a union. And again, I whether I have opinions on that or not, I'm saying it is they are operating in other ways that are against what they are saying out loud, which means, again, back to various theorists who is arduous and shown, if you want to be very specific about it, who talk about this difference between espoused values and values in use, meaning and again, a lot of times we're not aware that there's a difference. But if you observe behavior over time, because of that operation from internal logic, you can, you can observe the values in use, particularly over time, like one instance of data is not going to tell you. But if you look over time, if you see that over time. Your experiences with United are not friendly, and if you see that over time, there is organizational and individual experiential elements of Starbucks that would not suggest togetherness or community. And in fact, you have examples where there are folks doing that a lot better. Then now you've got something that's not only says, Okay, we really need to figure out what we're actually doing here, because another brand could eat our lunch on this message, because they are doing it a lot better than we are, because it's actually core to them, right? Like that, it's actually core to them.

William Harris 30:37

Yes, I was just trying to look up like a SL slogan here for a company, I don't think I'm gonna find it fast enough. I was just trying to go to their website. But the idea here being that it's like, okay, on the e-commerce side, if you're, if your slogan is, you know, let's just say helpfulness, or whatever this might be, right, where it's like, you're the most helpful e-commerce Store in your niche, yeah, then everything that you do is going to communicate that to the to the customer, and so it or it should, right? Like they're

Tamsen Webster 31:03

gonna be like, Yeah, I don't trust you, right?

William Harris 31:05

Yeah, well, right, which is even interesting to even, to even claim a value that's not evident, is is, not only is it not helpful, it is detrimental to you 100%

Tamsen Webster 31:15

because it starts to erode the know, like and trust that we all know is necessary for successful long term sales relationships? Yeah. I mean, I think you start to see why I get, like, all fired up about this stuff, because it at some level, I'm like, it just doesn't even make sense. I don't care if you even can care about the ethical aspects of it, even if you're just looking at the economic aspects of it, it doesn't make sense because it's eroding what we all generally agree is true about what's successful for long term alignment, long term loyalty, like retaining customers and clients that relies on trust, and trust means I get what I expect to get from you every time you keep your promises, and that is like, and are you going to screw up every now and then? Yeah? And if I have enough history with you to go, Yeah, that wasn't awesome, then it's then, then that's fine. I'm going to give you that grace generally, but not if we've only ever had a transactional relationship. And this is where, back to Starbucks, I get a little worried about the what you have to pay to be here, because now it's transactional, and they've made it officially transactional. And it reminds me, this is how my brain works. So I apologize how there was this study that was done about, trust me, this relates child care centers. Like, I don't know if you've got kids, I've got kids, they're no longer like a daycare but they did this study where, you know, one of the biggest problems that daycare centers deal with is parents picking their kids up late, okay, and, and what they found was, they did a study where they said, Okay, well, let's put a late fee on like, if, if we if, you know, if you're late, you know, forever, 15 minutes late, it's X amount of money. And what they found was it actually made the late pickups worse, because

William Harris 33:13

it was convenient to those people. And so they're like, that's

Tamsen Webster 33:16

right. And now they could actually say, rather than saying, like, is it like? Instead of just saying, as a human, I am putting out this person who is taking care of my child, as soon as they made it transactional. Now they could make it I'm like, Well, is it worth my is it worth it to me to spend 50 bucks to be 10 minutes late? Yep, guess what? I'm going to be 10 minutes late because it's only 50 bucks. Now that's not, you know, the maybe that's significant to some people. But again, if you think about all the economics and got, you know, in daycare, and sure, if you've got kids in daycare, it's like private college, so it's like 50 bucks is nothing compared to the whole thing that you're paying so, but you see what I mean, like you it's, yeah, I'm, I am so interested in this, and this is, fact, part of what my doctoral research is trying to get to is how can we more easily express these values in use, these theories in use that we're that are actually driving what we're doing. Because I see that it affects so much about our business strategy, about our product strategy, about how we treat our people, about how our organization operates internally and externally. It can finally inform our communication, sales and marketing strategies in a way that is consistent with the experience people will actually have that I'm like, Oh, we've got to figure this out, and the faster we can figure it out, the better. And also, I think there's an opportunity for us to, like, actually find a lot more common ground than we have found before. Because when it really comes down to what do you actually believe in your heart of heart, that's important, and you bring that to the fore, then you have that opportunity to go you. Actually, that's right, and because I, you know, again, humans love both consciously and unconsciously, want to be consistent with their beliefs. If we can believe that, bring those beliefs forward your own first as an organization, then and they, and they understand those beliefs and agree with it, then, then you've established, right at the beginning, a gorgeous ground for that, know, like and trust, because you've said, not by my thing, you've said we believe, and that's why we create this thing that is available for you to buy, right? And that I find is like, it avoids all the pressure tactics that drive people away from you. Yeah, it quickly identifies who are your people and who are not. And it it, like I said, it carries with it the core elements of of know, like and trust, which is, you know, I know you, if you're revealing to me your deeper beliefs, that's a level of exposure, transparency, etc, that we don't get a lot of, particularly from companies like, well, I like the fact that you did that, because I don't get that and or also, I can see, do I like what you believe? Do I like how you think? Does that make sense to me? And if it does make sense to me, I'm much more likely to trust it, especially if what you're saying is consistent with what I can see that you're actually doing out there in the world.

William Harris 36:31

And for those that are following along in the book, I'm remember correctly, this would be principle three, right patterns. What is it? Pattern? Yeah. Principle set pattern. Set patterns. Yeah,

Tamsen Webster 36:39

yeah. I mean, that's kind of the big way that I put this whole idea that, you know, the arguments we agree with are based on beliefs we already have, because our principles are the things that our intuitive brains go to first, like that, it's, it's what have we always seen to be true, like in that split second where I'm making a decision about what I've heard or what you're suggesting to me or what you're telling me, the only thing I have time to access, the only thing my brain has time to access, is what's already in there. And so understanding what's already in there is really important, as is, in my belief, talking to that part of your customers, prospects, prospective clients, brains first basically say, Okay, we're going to tell you that this does this thing, but we're also going to tell you why, why it does that thing, not that it does that thing, but why it does that thing. And we're going to explain it in such a way that your brain goes, yep, I could see why that would work. Now, is it the is the onus still on you? Is the burden still on you? The company to show that what they can see would work in principle, actually does work in practice? Absolutely, do. They still need evidence, case studies, testimonials on Absolutely. But if we can give them that one that that kind of crisp, clean, because, because they're for, then not only do we get them to understand that and agree it in principle, it immediately becomes a lot easier for them to explain it to somebody else, right? And not in like then, you know, not in this unnatural. Now, you know, so often we're asking people to parrot our marketing language when they are our advocates internally. And I don't know about you, I feel like a jackass if I'm like, you know, saying somebody's tagline because it's like, that's not my tagline. But if you're, if you've expressed what you do in a way that I can go, yeah, and definitely coffee is fuel kind of girl, then it's a lot easier for me to be like, here's why I love Duncan, right? Because it's like, I don't want to spend like, I don't want to spend any time with anybody else. Just get me my coffee in out, let me get on my way as fast as I possibly can. And I can explain to you without going, well, you know, it's because coffee is togetherness and I like that. Yeah? I mean, it's like, no one's gonna do that. But when you speak in the language of belief, and what's crazy, it's the logic of belief. That's actually what we're talking about here, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it is, in fact, a paradox, right? Like it's actually true, that it's a logical belief, then when we speak that language, we are much more likely to get not only the understanding that's critical for action towards sales and things like that, but we're also, we're also getting the agreement, internally driven agreement, internally grip driven agreement based on things that we have believed for a very long time, right? I think I forget which one specifically, but the longer we believe, the stronger, the stronger the belief, right? Um, I should know what my numbers are, but, um, the reason I'm stumbling on that one is because it used to be the actual principle and the. We were paid it, or that we changed it? Yes, that's the one that goes with deepest beliefs or hardest to shift. So, yeah, that's, yeah.

William Harris 40:08

I mean, it leads me, I think, into identity, or principle four. I feel like identity is the greatest influencer, like, and if I understood this to be what you're saying too, where it's like, well, now as me, as the individual, let's just say as the customer or as the employee, because we're talking about, you know, change within an organization. Yeah, if I identify in that way, then I'm like, Yeah, great. Like, this helps to support my identity, because I believe that is the right identity, that is the right way to solve this. Yeah, you

Tamsen Webster 40:37

can say, well, I have that belief too. And so now you're asking me not just to implement this thing, which, if left to my own devices, I may fill in that logical argument with, again, I'm only going to pull on what is fastest for my brain to pull, which, which means it may pull pre existing beliefs that are actually that work against what I'm trying to do. And this is why, if you're the person suggesting the change, and you put yours out there, get it's not about denying them their beliefs, like it's another point that we that I make later in the book, this isn't about challenging their beliefs. It's about kind of just putting a different set in front. So one of the things that I've been thinking about lately, you're the first person to hear this. Very exciting. So there's this great book put out probably 1012, years ago now, by the Heath brothers called Switch. And it was really very much a book about motivation, decision to action. It made, it was, I think, their first, the first book after they wrote, Made to Stick, and they brought in this beautiful analogy of how the brain works, where they referred to as the elephant and the writer, right? Meaning that the elephant was kind of the fast, intuitive, instinctive brain, which was controlled primarily by the writer, right? The human, the rational person who could, could control the elephant. It is a simplification, obviously, as all analogies are, but it's a really useful visual thing where you're like, yeah, like, there's this giant, big, strong thing, and then this little, tiny human trying to, just like, make it move, has limited capacity on that one. The more that I research this, the more that I realized that the the basic ideas is solid, but it is closer to, in certain ways, the the analogy that that analogy was based on, again, I'm a total nerd. So that analogy was based on one by Plato, where actually described kind of the human nature as a charioteer with two horses, one which was like our, you know, the better angels of our nature and our virtues, and the other one was kind of our vices. So we kind of, like take all that and put it together. I think first time on air. I think a great way to think about the brain is as a musher and a sled team, sled dogs. And the reason why is because we still need that human rational in, in in nominal control, titular control, of what's happening. But the reason why I think the sled dogs are important is because, you know, we went to Alaska two summers ago. We went to a sled dog camp, and they explained how this work. Is that work is that they will switch out which dogs are the lead dog, depending on what they're doing, and different dogs are like, serve different purposes in the in the in the line, right? And so if you've got the wrong dogs, like trying to go on the wrong terrain, you're not going to get there very well, right? So part of this idea of, like, really looking at what do people already believe to get to their identity, is saying, I'm not telling you, get rid of that dog. I'm just saying we're going to swap this other one into be the lead dog at the moment, because that one is going to be better at getting where you're trying to go. It also still maintains the idea that these are animals. These are wild animals. And if they see like, like, you know, if they get to a point where something is triggered in them, like my dogs, you know this, we'll talk about it later, both of them are retired racing greyhounds, yeah, you know, if they see a rabbit, they're gonna go right. And it doesn't matter how beautifully trained they are or whatever. I mean, they're actually much better now, um, but that's what it's saying. It's like, if triggered like, those dogs are still gonna go where they want to go. They're still gonna behave like dogs when they're let you know when they're allowed to behave like dogs. But we do have, as humans control over something like and again, if we don't pay attention, the last arrangement of dogs is going to be the one that's in play. But I believe that leaders internally to an organization, when you're explaining, like, here's why I've ordered my dogs this way, because this is where we're trying to go. This is. I think is necessary. So this is what I'm pulling into play. It allows someone to go, huh? I'm trying to go to the same place. I see what you're doing. I've got those dogs in my lineup too. I'm going to switch them as well, and, and, and they get to be their own thing. And we're all going to get there faster together. Now there may be that point where the someone goes, Yeah, I don't. I'm not trying to go that place. Okay, then we're going to have a different conversation. Or they're like, yeah, that I yeah, I don't share that belief, which, again, opens a conversation to say, Okay, well, is there some other dog that we can agree would be functional here, or do we just really not gonna see this the same way, and then what does that mean for us? But I think that ultimately, you know, the one of the things that comes from that fourth strategy, that fourth principle of that identity, is the greatest influencer, really does come back to the the beliefs contained in that logic of belief, which is, it's that set of dogs that allows us to feel who we are like, that allows us to go where we go and to do what we do, and allows us to be like, Yep, this is my this is me. This is what I'm doing. And so the more that we can say, I'm not asking you to suddenly use hippos, right? Or I'm not suddenly asking you to go someplace else that your dogs are not equipped to go, which is essentially what we're doing a lot of the time. When we're giving people messages, we're saying, No, your dogs are no good. You need this. You need these things instead. And you're denying somebody the thing that has worked for them, right, forever, right, or at least recently. So it's really important to understand that whatever we're doing, like you've got your you've got your line of dogs, but so do they and so how can we get all those dogs working together to get to the same place? Yeah,

William Harris 46:59

it's such a powerful concept. I really like that idea of these two different lines of dogs here that you're talking about. If, for those who are also nerds in this, I believe I learned the term from you in your book. So correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe that was Plato's and ignorasis, right? Yeah, when two truths fight, only one wins. And I wrote that one down too, because I was like, Oh, I like that. Yes,

Tamsen Webster 47:22

yes. So I also quote Fitzgerald in that chapter, because a lot of times people, whenever, when I first say that to people again, the instinctive response, the things that, because that's a new statement to people, I came up with it so you haven't heard it before. The two truths fight, only one wins, what that reminds people of, and what oftentimes their intuitive response is, Well, what about Fitzgerald, who says that it's a mark of intelligence that I can hold two opposing beliefs in my head at the same time, and I'm like, You're absolutely correct. So is he? We do it all the time, but it goes back to the sled dogs. You put two of those dogs head to head, one of them is going to be better, given where you're trying to go full stop, but they could both be in the line right at the same time, meaning I can, I can have those beliefs, but in one situation, one of them is going to be dominant, and in another situation, the other one's going to be dominant. And so when it comes to creating the conditions for this kind of internal awareness that may lead to change, or this internal understanding that may lead to change. It's about make putting the beliefs, putting those things head to head, where you're basically saying, Well, if you want to go here and you believe these things, as I do now, we've got a choice, because it means either you know whatever you've got arranged right now isn't going to get there based on what you've agreed to be true. So what that now means is either you decide you don't want that thing that you previously had said that you both want again, that's fine. You made a decide, when it comes down to it's just not worth it. If this is the change that has to be made, totally okay second or you decide I have to unbelieve one of these things, that if you know I, as the leader, has done my my work of trying to find it as to be as foundational a belief as I can get so it's as kind of understandable and as in arguable as possible. If you don't believe that, okay, either you have to unbelieve it. I mean, that's what I'm asking you to do, is unbelieve it, or, and this is generally the easiest thing to shift, or I'm just going to rearrange my dogs, like, that's it. I'm just going to rearrange my dogs. But you can't do that if they haven't been given the whole picture about again, not why their thing isn't going to work. It's you're giving them the picture of why you believe your arrangement, your strategy, is going to work given what dogs you have. And if they look at and go, Huh, I've got the same dogs. I want the same thing. I've got them in a different order, but I've got a. Different one in front. Oh, interesting. I can see now why my that dog is good for that, but it's not going to be the best one here. Let me switch. That's really what we're trying to do, is just say, how can we get like, just basically say, This is why I believe this. And this comes to a piece of research that I've I've come across since I wrote the last book, which is nerd. Nerd. Love it. Habermas theory of communicative action. So there's a philosopher named Jurgen Habermas who really talks about that there's kind of two different foundation, fundamental uses of communication. And one is what he calls strategic action. And one is communicative action, and that doesn't matter other than, like, basically, he's saying we can use words where words are kind of incidental to getting across that if you do this or don't do this, there's going to be consequences that you're either going to really like or really that, so that the words aren't really about like, the only understanding I'm trying to get you to understand is what the consequences of not agreeing with me are generally. And then there is and the other category of I am just trying to help, try to make sure that we both understand with crystal clarity where we're coming from. Because I believe that if I do a good enough job with that, that just your understanding of my perspective on this, my theory about why this would work. If you see enough the world the way that I do, or enough of it the way that I do, you'll see why I believe that. And then it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to, want to decide as well. That's really the difference between the two. But what's key here? What's key here, William, is that that Habermas says you cannot do both at once, sure it's one or the other. And so what I realized after I wrote this book was that I was like, you know, apparently, like I was a devotee of Habermas, but without even knowing it, because really, that's what this book is all about. It's about saying this is how to communicate to achieve action through mutual understanding, not through let me articulate the incentives or the consequences. In other words, it's not for those situations where saying no actually isn't a choice. If that's actually the case, if there really isn't a choice, or this is really you're really not motivated from, from really wanting some money, truly wanting them to decide on their own for this truly to be internal. None of this applies. Frankly, again, that's fine. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes we need to do that. But it really is about saying, you know, from this perspective of what would happen if we just said, this is what we believe, if we just said, and this is another thing I've been kind of coming to more recently. This is the position I take on this. This is the position we take on this. This is the position we are taking on this change that we believe that this change will accomplish this thing for our company. Here's why don't go right to the data. Don't just say because it's going to accomplish that thing, because this change represents the combination of these two central principles, central beliefs, central values that we hold and because we hold them. That's why this makes sense. Hey, it also happens that data supports us, but this is why we believe it. We're going to take that position. And again, back to marketing, I believe that if you part of the reason why people have such a hard time finding their position is because they haven't taken one in the first place. So this is really about it's like, take your position, stake your claim, state your claim, and state your case for that claim, and just about everything else based on what I've seen over 25 years, doing this now becomes a whole heck of a lot easier. Yeah,

William Harris 54:06

this is you took it exactly where I wanted to go, which is, in the practical sense, how do we do this? And there's a little bit more I want to unpack there, sure, but you reminded me of a quote that I really appreciate, which is, and I don't know who said it, I'm frustrated that I don't remember a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, and it's one of the my favorite, yeah, but to your point where it's like, the best version of change is going to come from, like, this mutual understanding, that's the change that actually is going to take place. You also talked about saying no, if that's not the case, for them to say no. It reminded me so much of parenting, and I do think a lot about when I'm when I'm working with a team. I think very much about working with my kids. And to your point, same thing happens as a parent. It's like, Hey, do you want to take a bath? Well, you've just given them the opportunity to say, no. That was the wrong question. The question should have been, what time would. You like to take your bath now there's no, no, you're taking a bath. What time do you want to take the

Tamsen Webster 55:03

bath? Yeah, wait, but you're still giving them agency about when that bath happens. Absolutely, that was, like, one of the best parenting shifts that, like, I was delighted that you said that, because if you didn't, I was gonna like, hey, this works really well. Yeah, 100% like that. And that's, and, I mean, and there's so much research on how not doing that as a leader can really erode your people's like and trust for you as well. In other words, we've all had leaders who are like, I want to get your opinions on this, and you're and they're doing it because they think they're supposed to, but fundamentally they're of their they are not going to change their opinion, and they're not even going to really take into account anything they've just asked for, at which point most people would say, could you just have told us that this has got the way it's got to be and start with that? Because a lot of people, a lot not maybe not everybody, but I know I personally have way more respect for you saying, I wish I could give you a choice in this, but I can't right. One of the best things I learned from one of my one of my, it's true, one of my therapists, was that phrase, I wish it could be otherwise, but it can't. Which at least gets to say, you know, I get, you know, reality is reality. I mean, I think that you know, whether you want to go for the Buddhist desire is, you know, is the cause of all suffering, or my personal self developed, I think definition of stress, which is that it's wishing things to be other than they are. You know, the thing is, a lot of us would just say, just give it to me straight, and that's really what we're doing. And I would say that the difficulty is, and it's so much a theme of what we've been talking about, William, is that we're not always aware of what it is that's actually driving our decisions. But what I have seen is that, and this is where I think it's magic, and it's it is, frankly, why I went like, took myself back at 50 to school, was to say, I believe that that creating this argument is a depressurized, de emotionalized way to help someone just articulate what their internal perspective is on something like, why do they believe that and not in a way that is, well, that's silly, because we're not saying that it's like, no, no, there's a reason why you believe it. Like, keep let's keep going. Let's keep going. There's, there's, it's going to be there. And you know, what's most exciting for me with the work I do with clients is that they they do it, and they learn to do it, and they get better and better at doing it. And, I mean, that's, as I'm discovering from my school work as well. That's that's supported by research, is that, you know, generally, there's two kinds of learners, that there are people who learn based on example, and the people who learn they they're able to, kind of, like, extract the rule. What does that mean? Think of like, any Aesop Fable, tortoise and the hare versus the moral of that story. You know, slow and steady wins the race. The story of the tortoise and the hare is the example. And so some people need, like, a bunch of examples, like the tortoise and the hare to go, Oh, if you're just, you know, slow and steady, you'll get the rate. And then some people can get that. Can read that story and go, got it, that's about this. And then once they see that, they can start to see it everywhere. But esap was a smart guy, because what you know, research now shows is that once people understand what the rule is underneath an example, they can start to see it in other examples that they haven't seen before. And so this is one of the reasons why, you know, a lot of times I'm working with leaders and and, you know, if I'm talking, you know, or if I'm working with folks and developing content, this is why it's so important that anytime you tell a story which really important, like they're useful. We need stories too, but we've got to state the underlying principle that that story was meant to illustrate, because otherwise, either people go, Well, that's a nice story, and they won't see the rule because they weren't, or they could fill in the rule with the thing that they think it illustrates. And one of my favorite little nuggets of trivia here is that the whole story of the tortoise and the hare was originally the principle it was originally teaching was that great gifts could be wasted by idleness, and you can just thinking through that story. You're like, oh my gosh, it teaches that lesson too. And you're like, oh, but you see if, like, you don't say that, and I'm like, slow and steady wins the day, and then you're like, great gifts could be wasted by idleness. Each person could go, oh, well, that fast hair just needs to, like, work faster, and they're going to win, which is a different outcome than the other one, right? So anyway, this is. Is why I'm so deeply interested in what these, what these really kind of, you know, theories and use actually are so that we can, as leaders, get them out there, because the whole process of change, the whole process of transformation, and this is very well supported in the literature, particularly adult learning literature, is that you cannot get to change without changing your perspective on something, which means without changing the theory in use that you have to explain it nuisance. And so this is where the whole philosophy of this book comes from is saying, I have to tell you what mine is to give you any CH, to have any hope that you'll adopt it to, or at least to raise the probability that you'll adopt it to, because if you hear it complete, then you don't have to do the work or the guessing, or whatever of trying to fill it in. And so this is where I just see, like, very wired to, like, saving time, but it just, it also works a heck of a lot faster, and because it's based on things that people already believe, what I see when I've been working and I've been testing this framework now for two years, we can, I can get there. I can identify that. We can identify what that what that theory and use is, what that perspective on is on a particular thing in a day, you know, and, and, and that may sound like, well, that's a long but remember all of the things that unlocks right, and how typically hard it is to get there. But what I've seen with companies is they're like, Oh my gosh. Like, now we can see what our core philosophy is, and we can see what our core you know, our core philosophy we're delivering on our mission, our core philosophy that's going to be the engine behind our brand. The core philosophy that is, that is maybe not quite yet in line with the values we want it to be. So what are the strategic choices that we need to make in order to get there. What are the tactical things that we need to do in order to bring those two things closer in line? I just yeah, obviously, I'm very passionate about this, but it's because there's so much that I think that humans and companies are capable of, and words are both the problem, but they're also the solution, right? They're also the solution. We don't have anything better, right, than the words, but words as concrete as they seem, sometimes they're actually really abstract, and we know that we can actually experience that when we use something like authenticity, and that's going to mean one thing to you and one thing to me, and unless we question it, you're going to believe that I see it the way you do, and I'm going to believe that you see it the way that I do, and we could end up completely in the wrong place and just mystified why we're not like getting something done, or why you're actually doing something certain way, and it's because you just got a different way of looking at it, and that I think can solve a lot of problems.

William Harris 1:03:07

This reminds me so much of just this concept of software within the brain, right where to your point is, you can't change without that. It's like, that is, I really like to look at this where it's like, if there's a thing that I'm struggling to do, a lot of times, I have to think about, well, what's the software that I'm running right now? Right now, and how do I rewrite that software to run a different program? And once I do that, then doing the thing becomes very easy, right? Yes.

Tamsen Webster 1:03:31

And I would say, yeah. I often refer to this as the operating system, right, like of our brain, and what we're doing for any particular situation, any particular change, any particular, you know, action that we take any particular product or service is it's where we're looking at, like this process that I kind of quietly advocate for in the book is essentially by like, opening a control window, or, like, you know, seeing the code. Let's look at the source code here. Like, why are we doing it? Why does it look like this, because there's lines of code that says it should look like this. So what are those? And because, if we like the way it looks, that's great. The more we can understand why it works, then we can kind of make the most out of it. If we don't like the way it looks, and again, we can start to understand why is it looking like that. All right, now we've got something that we can work

William Harris 1:04:20

on, the quote that I think you had that I think summarizes this. The best that I really like is Isaac Asimov, so the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs then, because you certainly can't rearrange the universe. So good. And I think that kind of gets into this idea here. I want to transition this, though, into who is Tamsen Webster, because

Tamsen Webster 1:04:45

she's a nut. Yeah? No,

William Harris 1:04:48

this is good. We all are a little bit nutty. Yeah?

Tamsen Webster 1:04:50

Well, I've decided in the last few years, and maybe it was hitting 50, that I was just like, You know what? I'm just gonna, like, lean into the fact that I'm I completely geek out about this stuff, and I love. It. And what I've found over time is that there's enough other people that also geek out about this that it all works out. I'm

William Harris 1:05:06

a nerd. I'm learning. I'm learning to geek out on the stuff you geek out on, but I geek out on my own stuff. The name of the podcast actually, is Up Arrow, which is a mathematical name for up arrow notation, which we use in math for making numbers that are much bigger than exponents. And so for people who are listening here, like, I don't know that, it's like, well, to get to Graham's number, which is the largest named Number we have, you have to use up arrow notation. And so to me, it's a very, very nerdy concept that it's like, just a little subtle thing to see if any other nerds come along and they're like,

Tamsen Webster 1:05:34

yeah. I mean, it's yes, I just, I love that. I mean, I love puzzles. I know we've talked, yes, we're getting to that, but that's part of it, right? It's just like, I love word play. I love

William Harris 1:05:46

Well, let's start with that one. You're a per super list, like, 500 days going straight. Like, why?

Tamsen Webster 1:05:53

Because it's fun. I Yeah. So, I Yeah. My longest streak of doing New York Times crossword puzzle was like, like, almost two years, and it killed me when I got past and I'm like, I forgot to do it. And it's not like, Duolingo where you can, like, like, patch it over with something. I'm like, dang it, yeah. I mean, I just so, you know, part of the reason why I'm so passionate about what I do and this idea of it all being transferable skills, because I think a lot of people think of message design as you know, or message strategy as this, like weird gift that weird people have. And what I have seen is that that is not the case. Now, does everyone have a needle that starts in a certain place? Yes, absolutely. And may that limit how far you can push the needle, of course, but I mean, the thing is, I know it would be very difficult for people to believe, but I would say 10 years ago, I was not good at telling stories. I was really bad at making metaphors and analogies. I was terrible at this stuff, and I looked at people who were good at it, and I'm like, What are they doing? It's amazing, right? And you know, some of this idea, like actually linking back to what we're talking about before, this idea of coming up with a good metaphor, for example, good, good analogy, a cool little story to tell, like you just did with up arrow, right? Is, is by understanding the thing that links it is the rule. So if I'm trying to illustrate this point to you, and if as long as I know that point, what I can do is I can start to look for other things that illustrate that point, and then I can just kind of collect them in my head, so that at some point when I'm trying to illustrate that point, I can pull out this thing. Well, you can also start it from the perspective of, let me just collect stories and random stuff, trivia, whatever. And I'll, sometimes I won't know where it will come into play, but I'll just like, oh, did you know, like, I have a client whose last name, her name is Judy Haller, like, and she's decided to, like, totally lean into that as her brand, kind of, like, be the verb. And I said to her, Well, you do know that there is a disproportionate number of dentists named Dennis, right? Like that. There is this kind of, like, nominal predestination that happens where, like, there's research that shows that, like, people unconsciously, like, line up with whatever their name is, like, not always, but she's like, No, how did you know that? And I'm like, no, no, no. But all of that is is, you know, lateral thinking, right? So it's, in other words, taking one thing and being able to see it as multiple other things at the moment, so, and that's fundamentally what something like a crossword is. Or if you do like the LinkedIn games, which they've started lately, right? Like if you do things like connections or on New York Times, or if you do what's it called, it's called pinpoint on LinkedIn. Those are things where you are. It's it's kind of testing and helping you develop the skill of seeing I could read this word this way, which is the expected way to read it, or I can just step back for a minute and go, Wait a minute. There's another way to look at this word. What is it? And so I love doing things like that, because to me, it's almost like, it's like my mental exercises. It's like going to my mental gym. It's like, it's like doing scales on the piano. By doing things like that, by doing those little logic puzzles, lateral thinking games. It just, particularly, I do it usually first thing in the morning. It just gets my brain in, in the mode of thinking laterally, which is fundamentally one of the, I think this one of the skills that my clients hire me for. Because, you know, if I'm working with you to develop your message about something, a I need to be able to kind of pull down what is that principle that's underneath this example that you just gave me? Or a lot of times when people can't put words to it, they'll give a metaphor. Or. Analogy, or tell a story, and I need to be able to go, Okay, what is the kind of grouping of principles this could be? And then I can say, so is it like this, right? And then they're like, No, it's more like this. And I'm like, Ah, okay, this is this piece of it. So I just, I just love stuff like that. But, you know, I do because it a I also learn things, because sometimes I'm like, I have no idea what this word is. What is this word? And then you're like, that's an amazing word. I had no idea. So again, then it just kind of gets, like, added to the pile of now, now I think of them as pebbles, because, again, random piece of information, potentially useful piece of information, is now how I like to think about it, penguins do this thing called pebbling, where they hold on to pebbles and they get it. So now I've decided that I'm really a penguin at heart, and so, and I've just got, like, a giant pile of pebbles. And for, you know, my clients and people I love, I'm like, here's a pebble. Like, here's the thing. This might be useful, here's my Pebble. So, yeah, so I just love those things, because they are often unexpected sources of new and interesting pebbles.

William Harris 1:11:07

I feel like our education system does a very good job of creating convergent thinking, but to your point, very difficult job at doing divergent thinking, and kind of what you were describing as this lateral thinking. I'm a big fan of as well, taking things from one area and applying it to a completely unrelated area. Yeah, in the diversion thinking. And so when you talk about the games, the games that come to my mind there for that, it's like, one of my favorites is categories, right? Where it's like, the goal is to think of the thing that nobody else thought of for that letter and that, you know, prompt, or whatever that is, yeah,

Tamsen Webster 1:11:38

exactly. You're like, okay, like, oh, I can go this place with it. Yes. Were you always

William Harris 1:11:43

this much of a nerd? And mean that in a nice way, yeah, were you always this much of a nerd? Like, what was your childhood like?

Tamsen Webster 1:11:49

Yep, so I have a navy, navy commander. Father, he was a diesel Submariner. I don't I did not get that gene. Dad, wow. And my mother was a social anthropologist, much closer to the thing that I got. So, I mean, but you, you know, so my dad was very ordered and, you know, hierarchical, and everything's got a system, and everything's got a process. And from my mom is this kind of observational, like, what is happening, you know kind of thing. And I think that, A, you get a lot of that just by osmosis and genes when you grow up in that kind of environment. B, we moved five times before I was five. So even though that's not really kind of like rational thing, there's, I think there is things that you have to like, learn to be, to borrow a phrase for my husband, like a self entertaining unit, because you kind of have to, you know, uproot, replant, uproot, replan, in whatever way. And I think you get fairly good at, like, assessing situations fairly quickly and trying to figure out how to operate in them. Now, adding a layer of of insight into that that I've, that I'm only starting to to realize lately is that I also realized that I have some traits that I would say score very high into the autistic spectrum. And I think this idea of kind of like observing like how other people are and trying to figure out how they're operating, so that I don't come across as much of as much of a like weirdo as I think I really, actually am on the inside. I think is very related to that as well. And part of that all came into play with, like, when I went, like, you know, in high school, it's kind of like nascent version was, I was an arts kid, but I was also the, kind of the manager of the varsity boys baseball team, and so, you know, I kind of operated in these typically, you'd think of almost as divergent populations. Like, you know, arts kids did not hang out with sports kids. This was, like, you know, this was the 80s. We're a full breakfast club at this point, yeah, um, so, like, we're that, that, yes, that was my that, that is my childhood. That's what it was like, you know, you did not have the Molly, you did not have the Ali, she's hanging out with the Emilia West Devis is like, that didn't happen. And then in college, I started by going with a very convergent thinking degree where I was like, I want to be employed. Because in the early 90s, that was, like, one of the first of, like, 72 recessions we've had since I've been alive, and it was not easy to get a job. And so I was like, All right, well, I'm certainly not going to get a job as, like a performer, so let me go for something where I'm actually going to be employed. Let me go for business. Bored stiff. And then I had a really was, and I was like, Y'all, this is not interesting. And I had, thankfully, a really good academic advisor who was like, you know, you took all those AP tests for a reason. And I was like, oh, and it happened to be that Boston University where I was going to school, if you had enough credits from AP, which it did, you could add a second degree. And I was like, Yeah, I will do that. And so what I added was a liberal arts degree. So I had as an undergrad, and then, because I loved that experience so much, I did it again in grad school at the same time that I was getting this one focused professional degree. That's like, you do things this way. Here's why there was also this. You know, I was an American Studies major with an art history minor, so I've got this, like, Humanities degree thing going on over here, and then in grad school, got my MBA, but in organizational behavior, so it's kind of like, you know, and managerial communication, so starting to blur the lines, but I was also getting, it's kind of funny, because I almost reversed them, so it was, you know, an MBA, but organizational behavior, so almost a social science, right? Like, it's a lot of, you know, consumer behavior psychology, and then I got an arts administration degree with a focus on crisis communications and so. And then I stopped school for a long time, and that's why I took 25 years off before I went to school, because I, like, I got four degrees in six years, and that was a lot, um, but I am so glad that I did it that way. I cannot tell you. I think I would absolutely not be able, I would not be doing what I was doing right now if I did not have both sets of skills, and if I didn't have if I weren't able to easily speak both sets of languages. And thankfully, that combination was enough of an overlap for me to add new languages. So I spent three years doing the the communication strategy behind the fundraising at Harvard Medical School. So, like, that's a fun messaging challenge. A Harvard needs money. No, it doesn't. It can use it better than a lot of people. That's a different message, and that's what we switched to. But it was also explaining to non scientists what, and, like, what's known as basic science. And like, everyone's like, basic science. Why are we funding? I'm like, because it's the foundations of everything else. So yeah, I I am with you on that, and I think that when I stopped going to school, like, I never stopped going to school, right? Like, do you see what I mean? Like, I that was always so helpful for me to all, like, be bringing stuff in from other places, and to say, well, here's a problem that no one's been able to solve, and I'm like, well, have they been able to solve it someplace else? And so that was really what this new book was about, was to saying, you know, business is always talking about, like, how do we retain more employees? Like, how do we, how do we successfully create, you know, because there's unsupportable, by the way, statistics about how many change management efforts fail, why? And I'm like, I know this has been fixed in other places. And one of my favorite examples of like, where business and, you know, another discipline has got totally different perspectives on this, is the whole idea of leveraging pain, right? Like, it's one of the biggest things in sales, like, you gotta make the pain of the status quo exceed the pain of change. And I'm like, if you've ever been to therapy, did they start with trying to, like, increase the pain of the stat, where they try to be like, you're doing it bad. It's only going to get worse, unless you No, because that is not the place for someone to make a, you know, a transformational change. They're not going to start from that position. So anyway, yes, that's a very long way of saying. I'm a big believer in kind of holding both styles of of thinking and practicing both, because both are necessary. And I think if we want to kind of survive whatever's going to happen with AI, it's actually the people who can do divergent thinking, yes, that are going to win, because AI is actually better than we are at convergent so guess what?

William Harris 1:18:39

Yeah, completely with you on that, I would say you've been collecting pembels. And then it sounds like the four degrees in six years, you were collecting a few boulders as well. So if you've got some extra, really big rocks to bring over, yeah, I got time for one more. And I really want to get to it here, which is, you hung out with Guns 'N Roses during blizzard in the 90s. And that's the whole prompt that I'm going to say. And I'm going to let you tele rest it from here.

Tamsen Webster 1:19:05

All right, so this actually feeds beautifully into what we were just talking about, which is okay, so there's this funny saying. I don't know if it's still true. They still say it about BU, but they used to say that when bu in session, the tri state area rose three feet out of the water. And what they meant by that was, like, bu was just basically where a whole bunch of rich kids from, like, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut all went to school, plus a bunch of like, Emirates and princes from, you know, the Arab states. It was legit. I mean, and, and there was a very high concentration of those in the business school, which, as I've already talked to, I was like, I was like, Yo, I don't understand you people. And so, because I was not in the tri state area, and I didn't, I was not a son like royalty from from the Arab states, I had to work while I was in school. And for whatever reason, I still don't really know how I decided that the best thing for me to do. To work, was a job where I could do my homework there, right? And so what that ended up being was I ended up being the box office girl at the night clubs on Lansdowne Street, which is the big it's it doesn't like we used to have a lovely nightlife in Boston. We don't anymore, but, like, that's where all my college friends are from, are the folks that I work with in the in like bills bar and Venus de Milo club on Lansdowne Street. And what happened was, is, because that was actually like the core of the nightlife of Boston, you know, various bands in town, if they just wanted to hang out, would come, would come to the clubs, particularly after their performances, right when we were closing down, the bands would come in, and then they'd oftentimes just, we'd basically keep the club open for them. There was a year where Guns 'N Roses was in town, there was a blizzard, like, they got snowed out of where they could go, and so they were just like, hanging out at the Ritz. And so they were like, they took the entire stab of the club, and they're like, come on over to the Ritz. So we, we hung out with Guns 'N Roses, like, two evenings after after work, you know, just kind of like hanging out with them because they were bored. And they're like, here's fun people to talk to. Let's do that. So, yeah, I talked to, I talked to Axl about Stephanie. He just broken up with her at the time. He was drinking crystal, you know, I was, you know, had conversations with Matt Sorum, like, Slash ended up like, home the next day, and there was Slash in my kitchen, and I'm like, Oh, hi. Like, I didn't bring you here. Where did that happen? So it was, it was a fun time. That's pretty good.

William Harris 1:21:36

Tamsen, it's been so much fun getting to know you, learning from you, if people want to work with you or follow you, what's the best way for them to get in touch, stay in touch.

Tamsen Webster 1:21:45

So I am literally the only Tamsen Webster spelled that way in the searchable universe. So you can find me on just about every platform except for x. And that way you can go to Tamsenwebster.com Or if you really want to focus on this, on the message design stuff, messageDesignInstitute.com.

William Harris 1:22:03

awesome. Thank you again, so much for sharing your time and wisdom with us today. It's been so fun. Yeah, thank you everyone for listening. Have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:22:10

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

‍